If you’re on social media, you have a personal brand.

It doesn’t matter if you work for someone else, run your own business, or have a side-hustle or three. Every time you show up and engage with others on the Internet influences the way people think and talk about you.

Before social media, your colleagues only knew your “work-self.” Your neighbors knew your “neighbor-self.” Your family knew your “home-self.”

You would never talk to your boss the way you talk to your grandmother, or vice versa (probably – I mean, maybe you would. You do you.)

Today you can bet your colleagues are going to discover that YouTube channel you started about knitting patterns for kitten scarves, your friends are going to find out that you’re a tough-as-nails negotiator at the office.

In a world where our colleagues have access to our home-selves and neighborhood acquaintances peer into the window of our work-selves, who we really are can seem like a jumbled mess.

How are you supposed to be consistent when your interests, activities, and opinions vary widely, from group to group or day to day? 

You create a Cloud of Connection.

The Authentic Internet Self

My client Alicia (pronounced ah-lish-ah) recently sold her successful business and is transitioning to being a full-time content creator.

The thing is, she wants to do a bunch of different things, from long-form interviews on existentialism to 1-min absurdist comedy sketches to creating a reality show web series about her hometown.

She needs to show up on LinkedIn to engage with a professional audience, but also on Tiktok to engage with young people in the comedy space.

“How do I do all these different things while being an authentic personal brand?”

Branding is not as mysterious as we make it out to be. Your personal brand is a combination of the promises you make and expectations you create.

That’s what people mean when they say ‘authenticity.’

Who are you, to us?

I told Alicia that to solve her problem we need to do some serious introspection on who she is as a fully complex human being. Once we’ve identified all of her personality traits, quirks, desires, wants, needs, and beliefs and put them on paper, then we will choose just 2 or 3 to highlight for her personal brand.

That way her personal brand – the promises she makes and expectations she creates as an Internet presence – will accommodate long-form interviews on existentialism, short-form absurd comedy sketches, and anything else that strikes her fancy. 

How?

By maintaining 2-3 consistent traits/values across all channels and projects.

Alicia lit up when I proposed this solution.

“It’s like, we need to create a digital cloud of connection!”

Exactly!

I don’t know who Brené Brown really is, because I don’t know her personally. But I recognize her whether she’s on a long-form podcast, speaking on a TED stage, writing a Tweet, or posting a photo on Instagram, because everything she does on the Internet reflects the same core values: vulnerability, storytelling, and data-backed.

Fans of Brené Brown have answered the question, “Who are you, to us?” And make no mistake, your colleagues, friends, and family have also answered that question about you.

So, why not show up with intention?

The core values you highlight online will be different from Brené’s, mine, and Alicia’s. Someone’s going to choose them. It may as well be you.

Thank you to Alicia for such an alliterative way to think about the problem of personal branding!